


... Be Light...

by Fangirlingmanaged



Series: God Knows I... [13]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Steve, I'm Sorry, M/M, Major Character Injury, Protective Avengers, Protective Steve, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5538137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirlingmanaged/pseuds/Fangirlingmanaged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony doesn't need Steve, but that doesn't mean he doesn't WANT.</p>
            </blockquote>





	... Be Light...

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY CHRISTMAS, YA FILTHY ANIMALS!

Sometimes the urge to punch Cap in his perfect little teeth turns into more than just an urge and into something closer to a blinding _need_. Take now, for instance, sitting in the entertainment room with the rest of his team, his _family_ , watching the blond oaf make an ass out of himself on international tv. And watching him doing for very _noble and sweet_ reasons. Making Tony be less mad and causing that tightening in his chest to get better, and that, that should be illegal, okay? Cap can’t be going around making his chest feel all tight and like his heart is about to stop. He has a goddamn heart condition, for god’s sake, and this should totally not be happening.

The whole team had been stationed in the communal floor’s entertainment room to watch the private screening of Star Wars because that’s something that Tony gets to do, okay, and geek out to the max. After his, latest, near death experience nobody was saying no to his geeking out. The whole experience was weird to say the least. He’d been working, completely not isolating himself in the workshop no matter what Rhodey would want to say about it, when Hawkass and Thor had come blundering in, using Rhodey’s code which he was rewriting once he had a chance, and had dragged him out of his very important project. Then, they’d settled him on the couch in front of the massive television with a bowl of popcorn to “tide him over until showtime” as they all started to file in. The first ones in had been the Maximoff twins. Pietro had sat on the floor almost to his feet with a grin and an irreverent, “what’s up, old man?” while Wanda had taken a sit next to her _older_ brother and given him a tentative smile.

Things with her had started off as bad as he could have expected. Whatever lies she’d been fed by VonStrucker and his men had obviously _struck_ , he-he, a cord with her. It had taken a while after he had come back from his comma for her to visit him. He didn’t know what, exactly, she had been told by her brother to finally make her give him a chance. He might have done something to convince her that he wasn’t a coldblooded killer, though, because Tony wasn’t delusional enough to pretend like Pietro’s puppy-dog attitude and eyes had changed her mind. That first meeting in the hospital, about three days after he’d made Steve fuck off, had been painful to say the least. She’d sat as far away from him while Pietro talked, and had been stiff as a board the whole time. The only words she’d spoken had been to ask him why he’d kept Pietro a secret from them. He hadn’t had an excuse ready so he’d just blurted out the truth.

“Someone needed to keep him safe,” he was feeling rather tired by then. He couldn’t even muster any of his usual bravado. He was left with nothing but the truth to offer, and in hindsight, that might have been why he’d been so forthcoming with information for her. God knows he would have taken it to the grave otherwise.

“And you think I wouldn’t have?” she had almost snapped at him. Pietro had shot her a look, it was fascinating watching them interacting with one another, and Tony had almost been able to see her anger dimming a bit. He looked at her for a while, full of overprotective rage and mistrust, and had sighed. It seemed like he wouldn’t get much time before he had to start making amends. He’d forced himself to sit down more fully, ignoring Pietro’s quiet warning about his stitches, and had forced himself to meet her gaze. It was never without regret that he looked at them, because even though he hadn’t ever known about what Obadiah was doing it was still his company. As she’d told him, it was still _his_ name she’d had to watch as she anticipated her death.

“I think you would have tried,” and hey someone should have called Pepper that day to tell her that he’d learned to be at least a little bit comforting. She was still glaring at him, and he sighed again. Well, the truth shall set you free and all that shit, he’d figured. “We were in a war, Wanda, someone was bound to get hurt. You’d already lost him once. If… if keeping him a secret kept him safe, then that’s what we were going to do.”

“I would never let anything happen to him,” she’d repeated stubbornly. He fought down the flare of impatience that demanded he snap at her, and instead focused on Pietro. He had always been easier for Tony to deal with; they were much too alike for that.

“Would you have stayed, willingly?” he could tell this surprised him greatly. He hadn’t considered it, not really, because he’d never had to make the choice.

“No,” he said after a pause. He had squeezed her hand and shot her a look again. He began to speak to her and not Tony then. “I would have fought for you, but…” he met Tony’s gaze again, and then turned his gaze to the ground. In the time Tony had gotten to know the kid, he’d showed himself to be rather shy when he was on his own. Wanda was the verbose one, she decided and he followed, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t make choices of his own. “I don’t… I mean, I knew Clint was with you and he was protecting you, but—I don’t—it wouldn’t have seemed right. Fighting Tony, you know—“

“You always thought it was wrong,” she answered for him. More of the fight had left her then. She looked just as tired as Tony felt, and his heart hurt for her. He saw what he had been after Maria’s death in them, then, more than in anyone he had ever met. “Even when the evidence—“

“He saved my life,” Pietro interrupted her gently. He met Tony’s gaze, and the sincerity there made the mechanic glance away. Condemnation he could deal with, but this… this _purer_ emotion seemed to be too much for him. The way he saw it, he was just making up for what he had taken from them.

“I will not forgive you,” Wanda had told him bluntly. It was all he could do not to grimace in shame. It had been too much to hope for, anyway. “At least not… yet. But,” she’d risen from her seat and was getting out of the room. Perhaps it was too much for her too, and there was no way he would make her do something she didn’t want to. “Maybe we could—maybe I can—“

“We’ll try,” he interrupted her gently. Pietro got off from her seat as she gave him a curt nod. The kid was about to walk behind his sister when Tony called him back. When he turned around, Tony could see he was about to ask him if he needed anything, but Tony just smiled at him. It was small, more like a grimace, but it was real. For the first time, it seemed to him, in a very long time it had been real. Maybe things were really going to look up from then on. “Thanks, kid,” and had to chuckle a bit at the brilliant smile and the sarcastic salute the boy had given him.

So now, almost a month later, here they were. Pietro, quick as he was, snatched a handful of popcorn from his bowl and Tony pretended to be annoyed with him. Kid had grown on him, it seemed. Like a fungus. The next one in was Clint, of course, because he would never be more than a step behind them as if they were his little chicks. He ruffled both their hairs, getting affronted grunts from both of them. Then went to the recliner and perched on the arm rest even though Phil wasn’t even there. Then there was Rhodey, who mysteriously came in to tell him JARVIS had asked for a favor and then had been off again, followed by Natasha and Pepper. At that, Tony had narrowed his eyes at them. The two of them being in cahoots with each other was going to be painful for him one way or another, he knew. Then, there had been Thor who had been cradling three boxes of PopTarts before sprawling himself on the floor near the twins. They had been sitting there, arguing between Luke and Han, when Natasha had snapped her head to the doorway.

“James,” she called out into the hallway clearly. Conversation had stopped, and Pepper had almost crushed his hand when she heard the name. Neither she nor Rhodey had yet forgiven either super soldier for what they had done to their best friend. Not that Tony had been any more forthcoming for either one of them, either, but… recently he’d had a change of heart. When Barnes had poked his head in and met his gaze, Tony was transported back to that first week in the Tower.

                                                                                      ***

Tony had locked himself in the workshop as soon as the others had stopped hovering over him. He was trying his damnedest to ignore the conspicuous lack of super soldier in his life. Up until that point he’d been trying to ignore what was going on in his heart whenever he thought about the other man. If he had done so, then he would have been crushed with the mix of guilt, fear, and betrayal. He knew, god help him, that Steve loved him. As much as he’d tried to lie to himself, even before the fucking war, thinking that Steve didn’t love him he had never been able to convince himself. For whatever reason, Steve loved him. Just like Pepper and Rhodey had, and Jarvis, the real Jarvis, had loved him despite what a terrible utter _shit_ he’d been all his life. It didn’t hurt any less.

So, needless to say he had drowned himself in Mark 64 parts and schematics when JARVIS had informed him of a visitor. He’d had a retort ready on his lips, when the little traitor he had created had opened up the com line.

“Uh… Mr. Stark? Uh, this… It’s Ja-Buc… It’s Barnes, I was… I was, um, wondering if you had a minute? Maybe? Just…” he’d made a frustrated sound and had fallen silent.

The sound of his voice had almost sent Tony into a panic attack. Memories of the days before the war, the two times they’d been confronted with each other, the ghost of fingers on his chest… without noticing he’d been on his ass with his legs pulled up to his chest. He’d been cradling his hands over the reactor; he was pretty sure he’d been screaming through his clenched teeth too. Barnes’s voice was repeating over and over in his head _JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!_ God knows how long he was sitting there before someone hesitantly touched his shoulder. The gauntlet was aimed at Barnes’s haggard face before either one of them could reach.

“You’re okay,” Barnes told him seriously. There was no expression on his face, surprise or fear or anything, other than something like regret. Tony had taken a minute to study his features, and slow down his heart. His hair was long and unkempt, what it had been in the videos he’d seen after Steve had moved out of the tower, and his face looked gaunt. His cheekbones were prominent, and there were dark circles under his eyes. For a wild second, it felt to Tony like he was seeing a mirror of himself.

“You look like shit,” he’d blurted out to the other man. Something like faint amusement had flittered over Barnes’s lips before he took a step back. He looked around the shop as if he was interested in the suits, but Tony had the distinct impression that he was allowing him to have the dignity to get back on his seat. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure? I’m kind of busy.” He’d turned around to his project, and picked up the nearest tool to tinker with.

“Yeah, Steve said that—“and huh, would you look at that, pliers seemed to be sharp. He looked disinterestedly down at his bruised and bloody hand, trying to calm down his breathing. The others had been trying not to bring up the other man to him since he’d woken up, and Steve had walked away. He forced himself to keep breathing slowly.

“Oh, shit, no. He said—I mean. Okay, forget I said that, he told me you wouldn’t—okay, let’s start again.” Barnes was pretty stupid for a super assassin, Tony thought absently as he turned around to look at the other man. It was then that he noticed what he was wearing. Loose fitting pants and a linen shirt. What the fuck?

“What the fuck are you wearing?” he blurted. Clearly, impulse control had never been his forte.

Barnes had looked down at himself self-consciously, and rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “Stupid therapy bullshit,” he’d told the mechanic. Still, though, there was something in the way he had avoided Tony’s eye that hadn’t convinced him of his dislike for it.

“So,” Tony continued awkwardly. God, he needed to stop rubbing at the reactor. Way to call attention to it, he thought wryly, as Barnes’s eyes dropped to his chest. “Steve sent you?”

“No,” Barnes told him quickly. “He… he actually said I should leave you alone. That you didn’t want to, you know, have anything to do with us. Not that I would blame you,” Barnes continued quickly when Tony pressed his lips together. “I’ve killed people for less.”

Tony had reared back in surprise at that statement. So hard, actually, that the back of his chair had rattled against the table and the piece of the armor he’d been working on had clanged to the floor. They stared at one another for a beat, Tony’s heart beating in his chest and Barnes’s squeezing his eyes shut, before the other man had looked at him again. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Dr. Cartier says… fuck, look, I just needed to talk to you for a minute. I’ll stay here.” And then he made a show of sitting right where he was.

“Like you need to get close to me to kill me,” and yeah, he’d never been good at keeping his mouth shut either. God, this was not helping his mental state at all, either. Up until then he had gotten through with a lot of denial of what had happened to him, but now? With an earnest looking ex-assassin in front of him, and a massive whole in his life where a super soldier used to be there was nothing to do but keep plunging on. Which, fucking hell, included feelings. Ugh.

Barnes gave him a small, nervous smile before he subconsciously hid his arm behind him as if he was leaning on it. Tony wanted to roll his eyes. The man was even less subtle than he was. Honestly, Steve needed better friends. And nope, no, he wasn’t doing that. Not thinking about that idiot. Nope. Barnes had cleared his throat, and Tony realized that he had been vigorously rubbing at his brand new reactor. He forced himself to stop. Tony made a motion with his hand for the other man to go on. This might actually kill him.

“I wanted to—to tell you what happened,” Barnes started hesitantly. His eyes flittered up to Tony before they dropped to his lap again. “I’ve been—my therapy—well, they told me that it might h-help. With—that I should try to remember. And, well Steve’s tried to help, but—my doctor said that I need to start confronting things. What I di-did. I already talked to Clint and Nat—“

“Clint and Nat?” Tony asked in surprise, though knowing about those two the answer could only be…

“Budapest,” Barnes said simply. Tony was not even slightly surprised at that. “And I’ve talked to Agent about the technical stuff. He’s been… informative.”

“His name is Phil,” Tony said in auto pilot.

“Right, so _Agent_ ,” and yup, Steve had talked about that. The little shit attitude. “put me up to date with what HYDRA is and what they did. He also—they’ve been investigating what they did to me. They thought they might reverse it, but… so far, it’s only going to be up to me. Try to, well, remember things.”

“So why are you here?” Tony asked him quietly. It was hard to hate the man when he was like this. He didn’t look like he could kill anything. Or, well, he did especially with his little upgrade. More than being unable to, though, it looked as though he wouldn’t want to. Seeing him like that made it all the clearer why Steve hadn’t believed him to be the Winter Soldier. This was just… what he’d seen in the old reels his father had. This was the man Steve had talked about.

“I thought—yesterday, well, these last few days we… I’ve remembered some things,” Barnes said quietly. He started playing with the medical bracelet on his flesh arm. “Things I did as… as the _Soldier_ ,” he spat the name out. Tony noticed he tugged at the bracelet until it started to chafe his skin. He wanted to tell him to stop, but couldn’t. “They’re easier to remember. Yesterday, well, what I remembered has to do with you.”

“My parents,” Tony croaked out. Oh God, that was the last thing he’d wanted to do. He didn’t need that. While his father’s death didn’t necessarily pain him as much, thinking about what Maria had died for… that might be more than he could handle. “Look, I’d love to help, but I’m just—“

“Please,” and something about the tone of his voice gave Tony pause. There was something almost desperate about the other man. He wanted to think him to be pathetic, but Tony was never that vicious no matter how much he wanted to pretend like he was. “I just—it’ll help. I can—I don’t remember that man. Who Steve thinks I am,” he avoided Tony’s eyes and the mechanic pretended like there was a pang in his chest at the mention of the name, “doesn’t exist for me, not really. I try, god do I try, but I can’t—“

“That makes two of us,” Tony interrupted him quietly. Barnes met his eyes and gave him a small smile. How surreal had that been?

“I don’t think I’ll ever be that man,” he said it like it pained him to admit it. Tony knew the feeling. Disappointing Steve was never a good feeling; it had almost torn him apart during the war. “I’ve done too much. Seen too much; so much more than that Bucky person did. I’m trying to figure out if I can—if I could ever—“

“You can,” Tony surprised himself by saying. Then again, as Barnes had met his eyes, maybe it hadn’t been so surprising after all. If anything, Tony had experience with that, “you will make up for it.” He’d leaned back, pretending to be nonchalant, as Barnes had told his story in bits and pieces.

Since then, they’d formed… not a friendship, but a camaraderie. Aided, also, by the fact that Tony had started to hack into Barnes’s visits with Dr. Cartier at HQ. He told himself it was just because it was the right thing to do, but he knew it was merely because there was a super soldier that was doing the same. The first few visits with the shrink had gone about as well as Tony remembered his own being. They talked, Barnes got through some breathing exercises to calm himself down, and then Dr. Cartier sent him on his way with some assignment or another. It wasn’t until about four days later that Tony saw something that almost made his heart beat its way out of his chest. Halfway through what had been a particularly hard memory, Steve had come into the room. He looked… nothing like the man Tony had known before the war. He hunched in on himself and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes as he walked in. the doctor was saying something to Barnes quietly, but Tony couldn’t care enough about it until Steve was slammed against the wall. It took all his self-control not to call the armor and fly half-cocked into that room.

“Bucky, stop,” Steve was telling him. He shook his head when Dr. Cartier suggested they get someone in to keep him down. Tony saw the war, essentially, play out in front of him in that room. He saw, for a moment, his worse fear happening right in front of his eyes. He’d never been in the Hellicarrier with Steve when he’d discovered who the Winter Soldier actually was, but he felt fairly confident in that moment that he was seeing the same scene play out in a different setting. “You have to stop fighting.”

“I don’t know you,” Bucky had snarled back. There was a sort of desperation in the way he punched Steve square in the face. “You’re my mission.” He slammed him against the wall again.

“You’re my friend,” Steve replied softly. He grabbed onto Bucky’s wrists, not restraining or pulling away, he was just holding on. He looked at Bucky like he looked at Tony, or maybe not exactly the same, but similar enough for Tony to recognize what he was trying to do. It was the same kind of look he gave him when the soldier was trying to make him believe he was better than he thought. “You can stop fighting.”

“I. Don’t. Know. _You!_ ” Barnes cried as he slammed his friend, his fucking best friend, against the wall with each word. Tony could see, though, how his arms were shaking. He had no idea what he was doing. Had no idea why he was fighting. It slammed something into Tony’ brain to see him like that. He’d tried harder than ever before to help Barnes with his memories. Even if he couldn’t face Steve quite yet, Tony could do something to help.

                                                                                      ***

Needless to say, Tony had had a nightmare after both of those days. Had envisioned Bucky as the villain in both, had wanted to hate him afterwards, but when the panic subsided and his heart stopped hammering in his chest, he’d forced himself to go out into the communal floor and look for Barnes. While the Winter Soldier was facing what he was and what he’d done, Tony was forcing himself to face the turn his life had taken. He’d had days when he would have rather pretend like nothing had happened. There were days when Nat or Clint or Rhodey found him near delirious with a bottle of Jack that he couldn’t drink cradled to his chest, but he’d forced himself to get past them. There were days when he watched Steve until his eyes watered. There were days when he’d snuck into the super soldier’s room when he was at HQ or in the gym and had stolen one of his t-shirts to keep him close. There were days when he stared into the bright light of a repulsor and willed himself to activate it. Each day he didn’t, he counted it as a win.

And truthfully, he thought then as he looked around the room, there was no way he wouldn’t have done it without the people around him. He looked at Thor and Clint, and thanked them silently for picking him up whenever he worked himself into exhaustion. He thanked the absent blond for sending him his way. He looked at Rhodey and Natasha and thanked them for putting medicine and food into him; for picking him up and cradling him when his night terrors got to be too much. He thanked his old lover for telling them _how_ to pull him back too. He looked at Pietro and thanked him for pulling him out of the funks he got when he sat by himself with a tablet in his hands, and remembers the blond he’d seen speaking to him in the hallway one day. He looked up as Bruce walked in, apologizing for getting caught up with his experiment, and thanked him for forcing him into _chick flick moments_ about a star-spangled man he’d hated on principle, but now realized were necessary.

Barnes walked in right after Bruce, as if finally having decided that he could walk into the room, and sat gingerly in a chair near the door. That same cagey, desperate look he always had after a session placed firmly on his face. He crossed his arms and avoided everyone’s eyes. After an awkward pause, Clint suggested they get pizza since Phil seemed to be running late, and everyone immediately pitched in to what they wanted. Rhodey walked in just as Clint had tackled a crackling Pietro to the ground and was giving him a noogie for suggesting Hawaiian, and Tony was holding his chest to stop the pain from laughing so much. He sat next to Pepper with a pensive look on his face and just muttered a quick answer when he was asked what he wanted to eat.

The pizza arrived about an hour later since they’d taken so long to decide what in the hell they wanted, and was accompanied by a frazzled looking Phil. He walked in with a shell-shocked look on his face and immediately dropped into the recliner. Clint and Pietro followed with pizzas in hand, and a frown on their faces as they looked at Agent. Nobody had seen him look that anxious in a while. Clint dropped the pizzas in the coffee table, and then perched on the arm of Phil’s chair. They could hear him muttering to him quietly, but Phil just shook his head. Tony glanced quickly around the room, and was surprised to see Rhodey looking at Bucky with something other than hatred. Rhodey raised an eyebrow, and Bucky nodded once.

“What’s going on?” Clint asked harshly, and Tony noticed that he wasn’t the only one that had seen the James’s looking at each other.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Rhodey said quickly before Bucky could blurt something out. Tony raised a sarcastic eyebrow at him.

“Well, that doesn’t sound cryptic or anything,” Tony told him wryly. Pietro snorted.

“You just have to be patient,” Rhodey reiterated. Tony turned to glare at him, and Rhodey just raised his hands in defeat.

“Won’t be long,” Phil said. He sounded distracted, and Clint leaned down a bit to meet his eyes.

“What are you hiding?” the archer asked him quietly. Agent could only muster a small smile before his eyes met Tony’s. “We should start the movie.”

Something about the way he said it made Tony think that there was another meaning to which he wasn’t privy too. He didn’t mention it, though, just told JARVIS to turn on the TV as Bruce and Natasha went into the kitchen to grab drinks and paper plates. Tony heaved himself off the couch to get a smoothie for himself since he wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol quite yet. He beat a hasty retreat after grabbing himself a glass, however, when Bruce and Tasha started talking quietly with one another. He assumed they were still trying to figure out what they were to each other.

“—Rogers is offering a press conference. Needless to say it is quite a surprise to see him here on his own,” a pretty brunette news anchor was right smack in the middle of the TV. Tony could see the other reporters standing behind her, and the stage. The podium with the refurbished SHIELD crest on it. and behind it—behind it there was… Tony barely registered the sound of his glass breaking as it slipped from his fingers.

_Steve._

_Steve wasn’t in the tower_ , he’d been hoping the super soldier would finally be able to face him and walk in on their get together. Had known the man to be a Star Wars junkie and had been looking forward to it since the trailer had been released. He’d been holding on for the other man to finally join them. It would have… it would have been a good sign. For him. For them. Tony… he’d missed him. Maybe. When he’d allowed himself to think about what had happened between them.

“Easy, easy, Tones,” he barely registered that Rhodey had grabbed hold of his arm and was leading him towards the sofa. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him, but couldn’t force himself to focus on them as the camera panned in on his old lover.

But by God, he was gorgeous. Even tired and with Winter Soldier bruises on his face, he was still as gorgeous as ever. He was wearing the navy suit, the one that Tony had so painstakingly made for him; the one he hadn’t worn since before their fight. He was as beautiful as Tony remembered him, but he wasn’t the same exactly. Maybe the others didn’t notice, maybe it was just noticeable to him, but the man standing there reminded Tony of the man before the Avengers. The lost-in-the-future, yearning for his old life man he’d been in the hellicarrier and the weeks after. This was what Steve looked like when he was defeated.

“First of all I’d like to thank you all for coming out on such short notice,” Tony closed his eyes at the sound of his voice. He hadn’t heard it since that day at the hospital when he hadn’t been able to put into words what he’d felt. Something between _go away_ and _I’m sorry_ and _I missed you._ “I won’t take much of your time. This is mainly going to be housekeeping for the most part, though there’s something I’d like all of you to know at the end.” He squared his shoulders and it was almost visible how he went from Steve to Cap in the space of a few seconds. “Firstly, I’d like to apologize for the most recent events that have occurred within and because of the Avengers. I want to accept my side of responsibility for what happened. As I understand it, both my best friend Sergeant Barnes and myself have been cleared out of all our charges, but I know this isn’t enough. All I can say, though, is that I was fighting for what I thought was right. For a very long time, it had been just him and me keeping each other whole. Together. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have made it after my Ma d-died,” Tony bit his lip at the distress in his face. He threw a quick look at Barnes and saw him clutching his legs as he stared at Steve. “When we got intel about his alias last year, I knew that I had to find him. If it had been up to me, I would have searched for him on my own, but then more and more got piled up on him and on me and… everything went up in flames, for lack of a better word. I knew, though, that he was innocent. The man I knew, the man that was my best friend, would have never done what the Winter Soldier did willingly. It was for that man that I was fighting.”

He paused, and the reporters immediately began shouting. Steve looked up at the crowd and the camera allowed Tony to see the fear in his face. God, he would have given all of SI’s wealth to get him out of there. He could hear Clint cursing quiet, and Natasha doing the same in Russian. Pepper held on to Tony’s hand tightly.

“There’s going to be time for your questions at the end. For now, I’d like to continue with all the information I have for you.” The press calmed down, and Steve looked down and took a deep breath. “I asked Sergeant Barnes for his permission on the amount of information I was allowed to give you for this, and this is it: my best friend was brain washed for years, since the day I thought he died, and was remade into the Winter Soldier. Like me, he spent time in cryogenic sleep and was awoken only for certain periods of time. SHIELD and I discovered last year that his memory was wiped almost every day, as well, so that he wouldn’t know who he was. Because of this, he was molded into the perfect weapon by HYDRA to use on their plans. I think you’ve heard a similar tale before with the Maximoff twins, and so it’s not surprising the extents those _monsters_ can go to in order to achieve their plans. As of right now, Sergeant Barnes is an honorary member of the Avengers pending evaluation.” He shuffled something on his paper, peeked up, then dropped his eyes again. “The next thing I’d like to touch on is the way we left things off after the war,” he made a sour face, “was declared to be over. I regret how things went, but it’s with a slightly lightened heart that I inform all of you that Registration is no longer a threat. It was a very important cause to me, as important as Sergeant Barnes’s clearance, that the SHRA was not ratified into law. It never looked to me as anything better than Hitler had ever done during my time.” Tony flinched backwards at that, and Natasha patted his hand comfortingly. The press were starting to get restless, and so Steve hurried on.

“Lastly, I would like to extend my apologies for the damage I’ve done to you. I’ve been… I have tried, for the last few weeks, to apologize to my team, _my family_ , for what I did to them, and now I would like to do the same to you. I want to tell you all that I never, ever meant to hurt anyone with my choices. I never meant to create so much damage, and I am deeply sorry that it was my choices that led to that. But I want it to be clear that it was _my_ choices that plunged us into that war. I have been keeping up with the news to the best of my ability, and I am _disgusted_ ,” his voice boomed in the sudden silence. At Avengers HQ the whole room went quiet. The whole lot of them rendered speechless by the passion in Steve’s voice. “By what I have seen from every new outlet about Anthony Stark. I come from a very different time, with very different people, but I have never met a better man than Tony Stark. I have lived, and fought, and interacted with him for months now and I can honestly say that the way you have demonized him leaves me with a very heavy heart and a bleak outlook on this country. Seeing as you will blatantly ignore the proof of his goodness, I would like to tell you plainly: It was _my_ fault that the war happened. Tony tried to help me, he tried to stop me from doing what I did. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I will tell you now that if I had known things would turn to this I would not have made the same choices. I do not regret clearing Sergeant Barnes’s name or stopping Registration, but I regret the consequences of those outcomes. And Tony,” Steve got blurry then, but Tony couldn’t take his eyes away from him. “I am so, so sorry for pushing you to make the choices you took. I am _so_ sorry for what I did to you. To our bond.” Steve looked straight into the camera, hoping for the best probably, before he dropped his eyes to compose himself.

“You idiot,” Tony whispered. His heart was beating wildly in his chest as he immediately thought of the consequences of what his stupid, infuriatingly _good_ super soldier had just done. Images of General Ross and Osborn and all the others he’d had to deal with, their threats, their plans… jesus fucking Christ, what had Steve done? “You idiot what have you done!” Tony choked.

“Tony, hey, calm down,” Pietro held onto his foot while the redheads tried to keep him down. The fear in his chest threatened to choke him, though, and he turned his eyes on Barnes. He was looking at him, something angry and confused in his eyes, but Tony couldn’t be bothered. There was downright _terror_ on his heart as he looked at the man and Steve’s voice filtered into his brain.

“Did you know he was going to do this?” he demanded at once. He must look a sight, sweaty and pale and wild with fear. “Did you know he was gonna do this shit?!” Barnes nodded minutely. “Why the _fuck_ didn’t you stop him?!”

“Tony, he’s just trying to make things better,” Bruce told him softly.

Tony rounded on him, about to tell him how _not better_ the stupidly beautiful idiot had made things, when his eyes met Phil. Agent looked like he was about to pass out. Tony suddenly realized he was the only one that knew the bureaucratic bullshit he’d had to deal with. The only one who knew why he’d sided with Ross in the war. The only one who knew of the threats the mechanic had received. Phil had opened his mouth to say something, probably snap them all into a plan, when something other than hollering reporters and a weary super soldier came from the television.

_POP!POP!POP!_

Eyes snapping to the TV, fear choking him and chaos around him, Tony sees the love of his life get shot.

**Author's Note:**

> Eyyyyyy, Civil War canon! Blame Adele for the feels. *ducks before y'all start throwing shit at me*


End file.
